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looked up, smiling, when I banged through the door from the apartment, but
     as she caught on, the smile fell away. She went a little pale, under her perfect makeup,
     and as I handed her the letter, I noticed that her lower lip wobbled.
    She read it. “You can’t go,” she said.
    “But there’s a scholarship—and I can work—”
    Best of all, I’d be near Tristan. He’d been accepted weeks ago, courted by the coach
     of the rodeo team. For him, it was a full ride, in more ways than one.
    Mom shook her head, and her eyes gleamed suspiciously. I’d never seen her cry before,
     so I discounted the possibility. “Even with the scholarship and a minimum-wage job,
     there wouldn’t be enough money.”
    For years, she’d been telling me to study, so I could get into college. She’d even
     hinted that my dad, a man I didn’t remember, would help out when the time came. Granted,
     he hadn’t paid child support, but he usually sent a card at Christmas, with a twenty-dollar
     bill inside. Back then, that was my idea of fatherly devotion, I guess.
    “Maybe Dad—”
    “He’s got another family, Gayle. Two kids in college.”
    “You never said—”
    “He was married,” Mom told me, for the first time. “I was the other woman. He made
     a lot of promises, but he wasn’t interested in keeping them, and I doubt if that’s
     changed. Twenty dollars at Christmas is one thing, and four years of college are another.
     It would be a tough thing to explain to the wife.”
    The disappointment ran deep, and it was more than not being able to go to college.
     “You led me to believe he was going to help,” I whispered, stricken.
    “I thought I could come up with the money, between then and now,” Mom said. She looked
     worse than I felt, but I can’t say I was sympathetic. “I wanted you to think he cared.”
    I turned on my heel and fled.
    “Gayle!” Mom called after me. “Come back!” But I didn’t go back. I needed to find
     Tristan. Tell him what had happened. And I’d found him, all right. He was standing
     in front of the feed and grain, with his arms around Miss Wild West Montana of 1995.
    I came back to the here and now with a soul-jarring crash, glaring up at Tristan,
     who was watching me curiously. He’d probably guessed that I’d just had an out-of-body
     experience. “You were making out with a rodeo queen!” I cried.
    Tristan looked startled. “What the hell—?”
    “The day I left Parable,” I burst out. “I came looking for you, to tell you I couldn’t
     go to college like we planned, and there you were, climbing all over some other girl
     in broad daylight!”
    “ That’s why you left? Your letter said you met somebody else—”
    “I lied, okay? I wanted to get back at you for cheating on me!”
    “I wasn’t cheating on you.”
    “I saw you with Miss Rodeo!”
    “You saw me with an old friend. Cindy Robbins. We went to kindergarten together. The vet had
     just put her horse down, and she was pretty shook up.”
    It was just ridiculous enough to be true.
    I really got mad then. Mad at myself, not Tristan. I’d been upset, that long ago day, because
     I’d just learned my dad was a married man and my mother was his lover, and because
     I wasn’t going to college. I hadn’t stopped to think, or to ask questions. Instead,
     I’d gone to the bank, withdrawn my paltry savings, dashed off a brief, vengeful letter
     to Tristan, explaining my passion for a made-up guy, and caught the four o’clock bus
     out of town, without so much as packing a suitcase, let alone saying good-bye to my
     mother.
    Rash, yes. But I was only seventeen, and once I’d made my dramatic exit, my pride
     wouldn’t let me go home.
    “Hey,” Tristan said, with a gruff tenderness that undid me even further. “You okay?”
    “No,” I replied. “I’m not okay.”
    “There wasn’t any other guy, was there?”
    I shook my head.
    He grinned. I was falling apart, on the street, and he